Video content may be delivered to homes and businesses over various media, including fiber, wireless and hybrid-fiber cable. Subscribers of video delivery services not only desire a broad menu of content but the ability to determine when that content will be watched. Digital video recorder (DVR) functionality, which may be incorporated into a video terminal device (VTD) or gateway, provides subscribers the ability to record programs for delayed viewing. The scheduling of a DVR is typically accomplished via a graphical user interface (GUI) that receives commands issued to the DVR by the subscriber or by subscriber interaction with an interactive program guide (IPG).
A VTD may have multiple tuners that are accessible to the DVR. The multiple tuners allow a DVR to record more than one program, provide picture-in-picture functionality and/or allow a subscriber to watch one program while recording another.
However, even with multiple tuners, conflicts may occur when programs with the same or overlapping time slots are selected for recording. FIG. 5 illustrates a typical problem:
In this example, a subscriber desires to record new program E. The recording of program E would, however, conflict with scheduled programs A, B, D and C. The subscriber must choose the program or programs to record and the program or programs to cancel. Current logic used in DVR GUIs presents the subscriber only one option at a time. For example, the subscriber may be asked to cancel program A, cancel program C or not record program E. If the subscriber elects to record program E, the DVR scheduling logic will first require the subscriber to cancel the recording of program A. Because canceling program A does not resolve all of the conflicts with recording program E, when the subscriber agrees to cancel program A, the DVR scheduling logic will require the subscriber to cancel program B or to decide not to record program E. The DVR scheduling logic will continue to walk through the conflicts one at time until the conflicts are resolved. The process moves in a single direction. That is, there is no “undo” button to simply reverse a decision regarding a program. If at any time during the process the subscriber decides not to record program E, any programs that were canceled must be rescheduled.
Newer “video gateways” are configured with multiple tuners that may be shared among “tunerless” video termination devices in a subscriber network and with a DVR. In this configuration, conflicts may arise not only among programs scheduled for recording but because of requests from the tunerless VTDs for access to a tuner. The number of tuners used by the tunerless VTDs and the tuners committed to recording programs may exceed the number of tuners of the video gateway.